Trust with Your Life
M.L. Gamble

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With love for two beauties, Kathleen Rose Seaman and Sara Kathleen Seaman. Also for Beulah Mae McKinney Curran Beckland, the dearest Valentine.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Molly Jakes—Kidnapped, chased and framed for murder—will she end up loving the man she trusts…or trusting the man who kills her?

Alec Steele—This Australian may have been brainwashed to destroy the person closest to him.

Frederick Brooker—This millionaire businessman was seen pulling a trigger, but it’s what he’s done that wasn’t seen that could prove much more fatal.

Dr. Alicia Chen—The beautiful psychiatrist caught between love and fear. Will her Hippocratic oath rule her actions?

Eric Brooker—This deaf teenager is very accomplished. Will his trust be betrayed by those closest to him?

Mason Weil—Brooker’s slick attorney walks a tightrope between duty to his client and duty to his conscience.

Lieutenant Cortez—Paid to uphold the law, he does his best to work both sides of the street.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Prologue

February 14

Molly Jakes grabbed her cellular phone out of the front seat compartment and slammed the car door. She glanced at her watch, grimaced at the 11:53 reading and stuck the phone in her purse. Slinging the strap over her left shoulder, she shivered and buttoned her coat.

Fog drooped down like gray flannel from the starless sky, refracting light from the surrounding buildings into a bright blur. Molly shielded her eyes against the glare. She could just make out the shape of the Summer Point Towers office complex a few yards away to which she had been summoned.

Checking to be sure she had locked her car door, Molly headed toward the bulky form ahead, holding her arms close to her body. It was February and forty-two degrees—cold, very cold for California.

It was also one of the last places Molly would have wanted to be if she had been given a choice. Handling service complaints against her telephone installation crew was part of her job. But being called out on Valentine’s Day from the warm bed she had collapsed into three hours before seemed above and beyond, she thought grumpily. As she got near enough to the building to see the glass doors of the entrance, she attempted to shake off her rotten mood.

But her brain wasn’t through grousing. It was bad enough to be thirty-four and to go to bed alone on the traditional lovers’ holiday because there was no likely lover within a hundred yards of her life. But to finally get to sleep only to be awakened by a shrill phone ring followed by a leering, male voice that taunted, “Hey, Jakes, I hope I’m not interrupting your big night...” Those sweet words were spoken by Jerry Williams, one of the more obnoxiously chauvinistic dispatchers, a man she had less respect for than a cockroach.

The heavy glass door swishing closed behind her, Molly finally managed to lay to rest her slightly self-pitying thoughts and take a deep breath. Hey, even cockroaches were entitled to their fun, she reminded herself. Another day, another buck. Think of the town house you want to buy. That’s why you took this promotion, remember? So you could earn enough money to buy some overpriced California real estate all by yourself. And this is how you do it. So be quiet and be happy you’ve got such a good job when a couple of million people are out of work.

Standing in front of the lobby directory, Molly searched out the office number for the alarm company she was seeking. She found Inscrutable Security listed in Suite 330.

She pressed the elevator button with a finger stiff from the cold and rode up alone, composing an all-purpose apology for the owner of Inscrutable, one Frederick Brooker, which she hoped would serve the situation.

Williams hadn’t been clear about the problem but said that the foreman was having dial-tone problems with another telecommunications line carrier, that the crew was going to blow the installation deadline and that they “requested, as per union guarantee, you know,” Jerry had crowed, “a manager type ASAP to run interference” with an unhappy client.

The steel doors slid open and Molly disembarked, peering to the left, then the right. Small painted numbers on the marble-faced wall across from the elevator directed her to the left.

Just her luck. The hall lights to her left were off. She took a few tentative steps into the gloom and stopped. A door eight feet away was marked 320, which meant 330 was several yards farther along into the unseeable.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” Molly muttered into the silence. She squared her shoulders and headed down the carpeted hallway. The air inside the building smelled of salt water as strongly as it had outside. The Pacific was only a few blocks away, and the building’s decor was typical of the growing beach town of Summer Point, sixty miles from L.A. Seascapes, painted rattan pictures and a collage of hemp and polished shells hanging on the walls she passed reinforced the style.

She stopped in the darkness and peered at the information on a doorway.

Suite 328 California Psychiatric Clinic, Inc.

Dr. T. Kahn/Dr. A. Chen/Dr. S. Thompkins

Molly grinned. “Not a bad time to get my head examined,” she said aloud, immediately feeling foolish to be talking to the woodwork. She also scolded herself for feeling so ill at ease. She was an experienced professional. This was a safe part of the county. Chill out, Molly, she ordered her thoughts.

Hurrying to the next door, Molly practically had to put her nose to the wood to read.

Suite 330 Inscrutable Security

A thin line of light escaping under the door spilled over her toes. She allowed a sigh of relief. Resting her hand on the doorknob, she turned it, eager to get inside even if it was to confront an angry client.

But the door was locked. Molly turned harder, but the knob didn’t budge. She raised her fist to knock, then heard the sound of a small chime and snapped her head to the right in the direction of the elevator. Someone was coming up. She was quickly reminded of the fact that she had not seen the security guard in the lobby her dispatcher had told her to check in with.

Was it the guard?

The hiss of the elevator’s air brakes told her she would soon find out. Despite her earlier admonitions to herself, Molly’s heart began to race. She remembered she had pepper spray in her purse, as well as her phone, which had nice, big buttons. She banged her knuckles against the door in a more frantic rhythm than she had intended and glanced toward the elevator. A husky, dark-skinned man wearing a black jacket and black pants, carrying a bright orange gym bag, stepped into the shadows and began walking briskly in her direction.

She only saw his face for a second, but it shocked her, mostly because she recognized him even though they had never met. The man with the bag was Paul Buntz. He had been a local sportscaster in Los Angeles when she was growing up, though she hadn’t heard anything about him for years.

Reacting to her fears, Molly reached into her purse. At that moment, the door she was leaning against opened and she gave a little yelp. Off balance, she nearly tumbled inside. A tall, very tanned blond man stared at her, his blue eyes narrowing when he caught the movement of her hand into her purse.

“What’s this about then, miss?” he demanded, his deep voice full of the lilt and music of a native Australian.

“I’m—I’m sorry, Mr. Brooker, is it?” She removed her hand and extended it, then threw a glance down the gloomy hallway. Paul Buntz was nowhere in sight.

“No, I’m not Brooker. You got business with him?”

Molly noted that the man seemed to dig his boot-clad heels into the thick carpeting, while managing to lean back and tower over her all at once. He crossed his arms and looked more angry than wary now.

“I’m sorry. Yes, I do have business with Mr. Brooker. My name is Molly Jakes. I’m a field supervisor with Pacific Communications. I’ve got a crew of men on the premises, and they called me out to assist with a problem.”

Her hands fell to her sides and she tried a smile out on the stranger. “I’m sorry if I startled you, but there was a man in the hallway and I got a little spooked.”

The blond man quickly brushed by her and stuck his head out for a look, then he took her by the arm and moved her into the office. He closed the door.

He locked it.

Molly took a few steps toward an empty receptionist’s desk, watching the Australian lean against the wall and quite openly appraise her from head to toe.

His very blue eyes finally came to rest on Molly’s face. “No one there now, love. Shouldn’t be sending a chit like yourself out alone in the dead of night, if you ask me. What’s your boss thinking?”

Molly straightened her back as the muscles in her face tightened. It was the nineties, but some men still lagged a century behind in their regard for women, she reminded herself. But why did a modern-day Neanderthal have to look like this guy?

“Well, this is only a guess, but I’d say he’s thinking he had a job to get done so he sent the person responsible for doing it. Are my men from Pacific Communications here in this suite, do you know?”

His smile grew wider at Molly’s challenging tone. “Just me. But I saw a van and a crowd of chaps with hard hats and the like around back at the receiving dock when I came up a few minutes ago. Probably your crew. Can I walk you down?”

“No, thank you,” Molly replied, not liking the fact that her voice held more sarcasm than was really necessary. She realized the stranger was getting the brunt of what she’d wanted to say to her dispatcher. Molly prided herself on doing a great job in a field overwhelmingly populated by men—the majority of whom felt pretty much like this guy did about women—without letting their jibes rankle her. She tried hard to smile sincerely and reached into her bag for a business card.

With a snap, she left it on the desk. “If you see Mr. Brooker, would you mind telling him I’m down with the installation crew?”

The stranger raised his brows, which were bleached white by the sun. He grinned. “I’ll do it if I see him. Have a good one, love.”

Molly nodded, then hurried past him out of the office and down the dark hallway. She pushed the button for the elevator and glanced back into the darkness. She made out a tall shape and was a little annoyed to realize that the Australian stranger was watching her.

He’s being kind. Chivalrous, one side of her brain said.

He’s getting a last look at your fanny, the other said, with a bit more conviction.

Molly stepped into the elevator and stabbed at the button marked B as well as the Door Close command. Staring straight ahead, she thought about the Aussie. It wasn’t until the other passenger made a noise that Molly realized she was not alone.

Paul Buntz looked more frightened than she felt, Molly realized after the initial jolt of adrenaline surged through her. His eyes were wide and his mouth tense. She had the distinct feeling he had been expecting someone else.

His left hand was in his jacket pocket. Molly had a fleeting thought that he was carrying a gun. The orange gym bag she had noticed earlier was on the floor at his feet, as if he had dropped it.

“Hello,” she offered, her pulse racing as the elevator chugged slowly to the basement. “I’m sorry if I startled you. I’ve done that twice tonight.”

“No problem,” Buntz replied, then leaned down to retrieve the bag. He jerked it quickly upward and two computer disks tumbled out. “Damn,” he muttered, hurriedly grabbing up the small black squares as if he didn’t want Molly to see them.

She turned her eyes away, in the hopes that that would calm him down, but not before noting that the labels on the disks said Inscrutable Security. As the elevator doors opened to reveal the concrete basement, Molly stepped forward. Without looking back at the ex-sportscaster, she hurried into the well-lit garage area. No footsteps echoed behind her, so she assumed Buntz was riding back up to the lobby.

Molly heard men’s voices echoing off the thick walls, smelled gasoline and the sea and spotted a group working across the huge, open space of the office building’s basement. Rafe Amundson, foreman of the crew, was watching three other installers wrestle with a five-hundred-foot spool of cable.

“Hello, gentlemen,” Molly called out. “How’s it going?”

Three heads turned. Rafe’s didn’t. When she got to him she saw he was scowling while the installers grinned and kept working.

“Those g.d. frame rats at Gutless Electric, Inc. refuse to call out anyone to help us get dial tone, that’s how it’s going, Boss,” Rafe said as he kept his eyes on his men. “Which means out of the sixty-six special circuits we’re supposed to cut in here tonight, thirty-eight are dead. What the hell Gutless is doing still jerry-rigging its old-fashioned switching equipment is beyond me.”

“Gutless Electric” was the way Rafe and several others referred to the other local dial-tone carrier well-known for its less-than-timely resolution of problems. “I’ll go out to the van to call and get the district level out of bed,” Molly replied. “But before I do that, where’s the client?”

“Mr. Brooker disappeared with his block-long limo about an hour ago.” Rafe met her eyes and slid the wad of gum he was chewing to the other side of his mouth. “That’s one weird puppy, you ask me. Ranting and raving, strutting around, the whole time his kid sitting in the car looking like he wanted to drop off the face of the earth. He told me to tell you he had to go to meet some people who were moving his boat down to San Diego but that you weren’t to leave until the problem was fixed.”

Rafe chuckled and cracked the knuckles on his huge hands, which for thirty-five years had so ably serviced telephone customers throughout Orange County. “Guess he didn’t realize you had to get your makeup on and comb your hair before you could get out here with us peons.”

She smiled and looked pointedly at Rafe’s crumpled T-shirt, which was untucked from his grimy jeans. “You know how appearances count toward making good first impressions, Rafe.”

“Hell with that, says my union rep. The brass wants me to dress up in a monkey suit, they can give me a clothing allowance, Ms. Jakes.” Rafe spat out the gum into his hand, wadded it up and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans, then lit a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth.

Molly bit back the two dozen criticisms she was ready to voice, well aware that the three installers were listening to every word. She gave Rafe an “I’ll deal with you later” look and asked, “Where did you park the van?”

Rafe made a motion with his hand, dug out a set of car keys and handed them to her, then turned his attention back to the diagnostic equipment on the cart in front of him. Molly walked out onto the loading dock, descended the steep stairway and crossed into the nearly empty lot. The Pacific Communications van was parked in the middle. She unlocked the back doors and climbed in.

Settling down for some intercompany unpleasantness, she located the home phone number of the district manager for repair in Rafe’s call-out book. A groggy woman answered on the fourth ring and then a sleep-filled male voice picked up, a this-better-be-good edge to each word.

After five minutes of tense conversation, Molly gained his agreement to dispatch a second-level supervisor—Molly’s equal at Garrett Electric Telephone, which was Gutless Inc.’s legal name—to help the frame people fix the circuit problems.

Molly hung up the phone, turned off the van lights and sat quietly in the dark. Her neck and back ached, and the headache she had fought off announced its reappearance with a vengeance. She hugged her coat close and looked around the van for a thermos. Molly knew a cup of coffee at this hour would give her a stomachache, but she needed a hit of caffeine to shake off the fatigue.

Grabbing a badly dented, old-fashioned aluminum thermos she knew to be Rafe’s from the front seat, Molly poured coffee into a foam cup and tried to relax while she waited for reinforcements.

Her mind wandered to the blue-eyed Australian stranger on the third floor. She met a lot of men on the job. Customers, fellow employees, lawyers from the megafirm that shared the Pacific Communications building in downtown Mission Viejo. But this guy seemed different from most. While few got her blood running during an initial meeting, this man had.

Despite his beak of a nose and the craggy lines around his eyes, he was handsome in what might be described as a dangerous way. A way that made her forget what she was doing. A way that got her thinking about things she would like to be doing—with him.

He was powerfully built and what her grandmother called cocksure of himself. Molly blushed and smiled at the X-rated thoughts racing through her mind.

But there was no denying the attraction she’d felt toward him. Could it have been fate willing them to meet on a night like this? If she went upstairs later, would he still be there?

The Aussie was fresh and a bit arrogant, but very, very sexy. Definitely dangerous for a serious-minded professional woman with a plan for the next couple of years that called for hard work and all the overtime she could stand.

“Heck of a guy to meet on Valentine’s Day,” Molly murmured, then laughed aloud at her silly fantasizing. The sound of an approaching car cut short her thoughts, and she peeked out the window, wondering if Frederick Brooker was ready to reappear. Sure enough, as she watched, a long, cream-colored Lincoln limo rolled past. It stopped near the dark side of the loading dock.

Molly put her hand on the door handle, but stopped as a shape emerged from the darkness. From twenty yards away, she could not make out the face of the person in black, but the bright orange bag the man carried told her it was Paul Buntz.

The back door of the limo opened, Buntz got in and the car sped off.

So much for her confrontation with Mr. Brooker, Molly thought. With a sigh, she stepped out of the van and headed back to the crew for what she feared would be a long night.

* * *

AT SIX-THIRTY in the morning, Molly pulled out of the parking lot of Summer Point Towers. Sixty circuits into Inscrutable Security from various commercial and residential-alarm customers were at last up and running.

Frederick Brooker had not returned, though she had endured a terse phone call from him at 2:00 a.m., during which he’d promised to “report you and your crew to the Public Utilities Commission, the Better Business Bureau and the mayor’s office if those circuits aren’t up as promised!” After all, Brooker had continued, hadn’t he paid a huge advance installation bill because the credit office of Pacific Communications had requested it?

Molly had done her best to soothe him, imagining that a man like Brooker had taken it personally when his business’s creditworthiness had been questioned by her company’s business office. But despite that edge of ego, she had been able to calm Brooker down remarkably fast.

The supervisor from Garrett Electric had shown up and been effective with his technicians; all in all, it had not been a bad night’s work. As she pulled off the Orange Freeway and headed up the already busy streets toward home, Molly figured she could shower, sleep for a couple of hours and be back in the office by noon.

She turned off the soft-rock station and flipped to an all-news station. The first story was a frightening one about more turmoil in the Middle East, a car bomb and dead children. The second story was about the murder of ex-sportscaster and football player, Paul Buntz.

Molly stared at her radio as if she could see the story unfold, while the broadcaster filled in the details. Shot five times in a deserted parking lot near the Summer Point Marina, Buntz was found floating in the Pacific by an unidentified man at approximately 2:00 a.m.

A suspect was being sought by the police, the radio voice added. He was a wealthy Orange County businessman identified as Frederick Brooker, owner of Inscrutable Security in Summer Point. An eyewitness reported seeing Brooker speeding off in a beige Lincoln limo, in the direction of Mission Verde.

Chapter One

September 2

Like most women, Molly Jakes was good in emergencies.

The sight of blood, particularly other people’s, did not freak her out. Which is why, without hesitation, she was ready to help as soon as she spotted three wrecked cars and four people scattered across the sloping concrete freeway off ramp, a mile from her home.

As she braked, she noted it was 3:00 a.m. exactly by the car’s clock. Above her in the damp, late-summer air, ribbons of fog wound around the thousand-watt fluorescent bulbs atop the light poles lining the double-laned expanse, giving animate and inanimate objects alike the spooky blue tint peculiar to the middle of night.

The accident had occurred just a minute or two ago, she estimated, reaching for the cellular phone in the car console. Her fingers brushed the cold leather where the mobile unit was usually nestled and she swore under her breath. The phone was being repaired, and all she had in her purse was the antiquated pager that gave her no ability to call out.

She glanced in the rearview mirror, hoping to see the reflection of oncoming headlights, but caught only a blank swatch of asphalt. Clearing the incline, she braked and rolled past a red-and-silver Bronco, its wheels still spinning. From her location she saw a handful of twinkling lights from the sleeping houses lining the hills of Mission Viejo. The town-house development where she lived was just beyond. For a moment, she considered driving on and calling for help from home, then returning. But the smell of burned rubber and the sight of people tossed like rag dolls thrown by a malicious giant changed her mind. Years of first-aid training had taught her that in many cases five minutes’ delay could cost a life.

Molly judged that the wreck had started in the left lane, for the Bronco had left a long trail of skid marks that cut across both lanes at an angle. The car it had run into—a small blue compact—was smashed into the two-foot-thick abutment on the right, facing east in the westbound lanes. It was hooked into the Bronco’s door panel by its rear bumper.

There were four people on the pavement. Two were facedown near the back of the Bronco, which was spitting out a threatening plume of white smoke from under its hood. One lay on his back in a strangely restful pose, the fourth a few yards over against the abutment.

He was the only one she knew for sure was dead. Even at a distance of twenty feet, Molly’s brain registered his missing limb and the bright smears on the ground.

She slowed and scouted a safe place to stop past the carnage, a shot of fear immobilizing her for a second before giving her brain a tremendous rush. As a phone company manager with eight employees reporting to her, Molly had completed over a hundred hours of emergency training. She even knew basic sign language commands. Traffic accidents, electrocution, cuts, poison, burns and broken bones, she had studied how to handle them in films and handbooks. Monthly newsletters, called Flashes, parked themselves weekly in her In box, and over hurried lunches she had made it a point to read them all. There were countless examples of how death resulted because the most basic safety rules weren’t followed.

Thanks to her training, all the procedures for keeping herself safe kicked in together in her head. She continued past the accident for twenty yards, leaving room for the cops and ambulances, and parked cleanly off the road. She was directly in front of a call box, right under a light. While waiting for the operator to answer, she removed her dark windbreaker to reveal a more easily seen white T-shirt. Molly noted more skid marks and a flattened safety fence lying on its back just ahead of her and glanced down the steep hillside.

Imagining another night’s vehicular violence gave her a chill, but she remained cool and gave the necessary information to the operator, whose sole responsibility was to communicate with motorists in trouble. A minute later, she hung up and grabbed two blankets she always kept in the trunk, looked both ways and dashed into the traffic lanes at the edge of the mayhem.

At that moment, a man in a black pickup truck rolled toward her. He stopped in the left lane and jumped out, yelling, “Did you call it in?”

“Yes. They’re coming,” she answered. “Do you have any flares?”

“Good idea.” The guy ran back to his truck while Molly hurried to the man lying on his back. He was young and preppy-looking, dressed in a white polo shirt, khakis and one deck shoe. The emblem on his shirt wasn’t an alligator, though. It was a face, a smiling Oriental face. She threw one of the blankets over him, smacking her knuckles on something hard as she tucked the cloth around his knee.

Her fingers wrapped around the object and she scooted it out from under him, recognizing its shape before she saw it, even though she had never held one before.

It was a gun. Small, heavier than she would have guessed, it was warm to the touch.

For a second, Molly couldn’t think what to do with it; panic squeezed out all thought. Finally she took a big gulp of air and stuck the thing into the pocket of her denim skirt. In the fullness of the fabric, the pocket swallowed the gun.

Molly pressed her hand against the man’s neck. No pulse. She pulled his eyelids up and found his pupils were dilated and motionless.

He was dead.

Molly drew back, suddenly cold, noticing how incredibly noisy it was near the truck since its engine was still running. Her train of thought was probably born out of reflexive self-protection, she realized, remembering people say that in times of great tragedy it’s possible to put one’s emotions on hold and take them out later when there’s more time for a nervous breakdown. Which is what Molly felt she might have someday when she recalled how lonely it felt to sit beside two dead men.

These were the first corpses she had ever seen, and her eyes filled with tears. They were so still. And heavy, as if gravity was sucking their bodies down into their graves already.

A few months ago she had been circumstantially involved in a murder case, but it had not saddened her like this. In that matter, Molly had been witness to no mayhem, had not been privy to dead eyes and wounds and blood. Because of that, she had remained calm. She had given the police various coherent statements, had coolly appeared before a grand jury, was set to testify next week at the trial. Molly had not even spent one sleepless night because of images of corpses.

Something told her that this time things were going to be different.

Now that she was face-to-face with violence, all she could think about was the car’s engine, the pebbles digging into her knee, the weight in her pocket, the sound of her heartbeat echoing in her ears and her own mortality. If she had been driving on this stretch of road only a few seconds earlier...

Molly stared at the dead man beside her, finally forcing herself into action. Carefully she leaned over the figure and started CPR.

Five puffs in, then push, push, push.

“Let me help you.” A man in a blue mechanic’s jumpsuit touched her shoulder and she nodded, not allowing herself to wonder what was going on around her, never missing a breath. She blew expelled air into the stranger’s body, while the other good samaritan pushed down on his chest.

The stranger remained dead.

“There’s one alive by the Bronco. I don’t think the car’s a risk to blow up. Do you want to try him?” the man asked, gently squeezing her arm as he coaxed her to her feet.

Molly stood up and nodded, feeling her lip tremble and her eyes sting. She moved away as if walking through sand. A rock, zinged out from under the tire of a vehicle on the freeway above, smacked into her forehead above the eye. It hurt like mad, but for some reason Molly welcomed the pain.

She heard a squeal of tires behind her and shouts, then two young women, dressed in bicycle pants and U.C.L.A. T-shirts, ran past her. They began working on one of the other accident victims, an older man with white hair. When he lifted his hand, all three women grinned.

Encouraged, Molly fell to her knees next to the remaining man. He had on a heavy windbreaker zipped up tight. His pulse was so weak she could hardly feel it, and his dark skin had paled, particularly around his mouth. Glancing back at the off-ramp entrance, she saw both lanes were blocked by cars and several people were running around.

The pickup driver and a teenager with dreadlocks were working together and lighting a string of flares around the blocked lanes.

Molly tilted the man’s head back, then blew sharply through his dry lips. Her hands fumbled with his windbreaker, stopping at the hard lump over his heart.

Damn if he wasn’t wearing a gun! A bigger one than she had picked up before, to judge from the outline of it. The weapon was strapped against his chest.

“What in the hell was going on out here?” she asked in fear and anger. No one answered her.

Visions of high-speed chases and deranged drug dealers flooded her brain. She blanched, but pushed on. A second worry, that this scene somehow had something to do with the murder trial she was going to testify at, Molly dismissed. Get a grip, she scolded. Lives were depending on her.

The scream and whine of emergency vehicles began to fill the air.

The girls had saved the white-haired man, Molly thought. Maybe she could save this one, too.

“Please stay in your cars and proceed.” This static-tinged command blared out of a patrol car’s loudspeaker as two black and whites rolled up and parked a yard from Molly. She left the gun where it was and slipped her hand beneath the holster to do chest compressions. Suddenly the man’s body jerked, and he inhaled and began to gag.

Molly turned him on his side so he wouldn’t choke, which was when she saw the hole. It was about the size of a pencil, neat and clean, right in the center of his left shoulder blade. Blood soaked his entire back.

“We’ll take over, miss.”

The paramedic’s hand on Molly’s shoulder made her gasp. She stood. “His pulse is low, about thirty-three. I’ve been doing CPR for three minutes. And I think he’s got a bullet in the back,” she added.

Hearing this information, the paramedic didn’t even blink, but turned and ordered, “Get me an IV and plasma. Possible gunshot.”

A uniformed cop beckoned Molly and the two coeds. They followed, and Molly saw there was now an entire fleet of police and rescue trucks. The authoritarian honk and blinking lights of a fire engine clogged her senses along with the sounds of radios, dispatchers, air brakes and the whacka, whacka, whacka of a hovering news helicopter. It buffeted the group below with hot gusts of air.

“Hell of a job, ladies,” offered a smiling highway patrolman, his beige uniform impossibly clean. “We could have used you after the last earthquake.”

The group stood silent, watching as the ambulances loaded up their badly battered or lifeless cargo. One of the policemen, a man about sixty with a precision salt-and-pepper haircut and a fat polyester tie, took Molly aside to ask a few questions.

“Molly Jakes. I work for Pacific Communications,” she answered.

“Phone number?”

She gave him her work number, craning her neck to look at the firemen, all yellow jackets and boots. They were spraying foam on the Bronco, and she thought of herself sitting next to it five minutes before.

“What were you doing out at 3:00 a.m., Miss Jakes?”

“I was going home. I live just up the road, in Mission Verde.”

He stared at her. “Didn’t you have something to do with the Brooker murder case?”

Weakly she nodded, cursing the fact that she was now so well-known by the authorities in her own town. She had preferred her law-abiding, anonymous life. Being known by sight by a cop gave her an odd feeling. She explained that she was a witness, though only a material one. For a moment, she was afraid he was going to make her go to the station. But he let it drop.

Molly gave him her address, telling herself that the edge in his voice wasn’t really thankless. Molly had a tendency to apologize for other people; it was her way of retaining her optimism about the human race.

This guy is obviously tired, she told herself. He seemed to be near retirement age, and Molly imagined he was sick of being called out on these middle-of-the-night disasters.

“Where were you coming from?”

“Summer Point Towers. Eighteen ten Summer Road. I got a call that there was an emergency at that location where my phone crew was doing an installation.”

“How long were you there?”

“Not long. It turned out the call was a mistake by the dispatcher.”

“That happen often?”

“No, thank God.” It had never happened before, not to Molly anyway. But she wasn’t going to get into that with the cops. She was going to raise hell with dispatch, but it certainly wasn’t a big deal.

The cop raised his eyebrows, then glanced in the direction of her parked car. “You went alone?”

“Yes.” She swallowed the words “I’m a big girl, Officer,” and with this little defiance felt her equilibrium take a turn for the better.

“Okay, Miss Jakes. We’ll be calling you tomorrow, I mean later today, to get you to come in and give a complete statement of what you saw here tonight.”

“Fine.” She wanted to ask what he thought had caused the accident, but the cop took a couple of steps toward one of the coeds, probably to ask her the same basic questions. Molly clasped her hands over her forearms and looked down to see why they felt so dry and tight. She had brown splotches on her T-shirt and skirt, and all over her arms. For a moment, she was nauseous, but forced herself to breathe deeply and headed for her car.

A red-haired patrolman nodded as she passed, his eyes flickering over her. More than anything, Molly wanted to go home and take a hundred-and-fifty-degree shower, then soak in a bubble bath.

“You can go ahead and get back on the freeway, ma’am,” the officer told her. “They’re setting up barricades so they can get the fuel hosed off, but you can make it if you go now.”

Molly smiled and kept walking, wishing someone could drive her home, wishing she had someone waiting for her there. Now that the emergency was over, that initial rush of strength was dissipating and her bones felt like rubber.

Sliding into the car, Molly sat for a moment and stared in disbelief at the ignition. Her key ring, holding house keys, office keys, the whole shebang, was hanging there. She never left her keys in the car! If it had been stolen, the insurance company wouldn’t have paid off, good samaritan acts notwithstanding. So much for patting herself on the back earlier for following safety rules, she thought.

The car started immediately. Molly buckled her seat belt and hit the door-lock button. Accelerating, she turned right at Verdugo Boulevard and headed for home. She wanted off the freeway. Out of this scene of mayhem that was much too real to ever forget as one could an upsetting movie or even a tragic news show.

* * *

AS MOLLY DROVE AWAY from the accident scene, the man in the blue mechanic’s jumpsuit gave his name and telephone number to Lieutenant Cortez. He was also thanked and sent home.

The man returned to his car, but before driving off, he reached for his cellular phone and punched in a number.

“Hello,” a male voice snapped in his ear.

“Nothing went down as planned,” the slight man reported, wiping a bead of sweat from his thin mustache. Despite the cool night air, his being that close to a cop had made him nervous. “I was waiting for your guys, but all hell broke loose. They were ambushed or something. Both of your vehicles were in a wreck. When the girl arrived, she dived right in to help. By the time I got out of the car, there were three other cars stopped and I never got a clear shot.”

“Why didn’t you take them all out?” the man on the other end demanded. “I would have covered you for the extra work.”

“It never would have worked. There were too many people.”

“Well, where the hell is Steele? Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. Probably. Two guys are. The two live ones I saw were an old dude and a black guy. He ain’t either of those, I guess.”

“Well, at least he’s dead. That changes things, but...” The man’s voice trailed off. “Well, tomorrow I’ll send someone for the girl. You go back home. I’ll be in touch.”

The man in the blue coveralls hung up without answering and drove off. He saw the girl’s car up ahead, wondered if he could get a clean shot through the window, but discarded the thought. Too chancy with all the cops around.

He’d get her later. Or someone else would.

* * *

A BLOCK AWAY FROM the accident scene, Molly leaned back into the seat. It was then she noticed the dash light on. The tiny red diagonal line in the box indicating the silhouette of a car was blinking brightly, Detroit’s high-tech way of telling her that one of the car doors was ajar.

“For criminey’s sake,” she muttered, feeling the driver’s door with her left hand. She thought she had closed it tight and realized she was more wiped out than she feared.

“Put your hand back on the wheel.”

The man’s voice boomed out from the back seat in a ragged, angry command. It was deep, with an accent Molly’s terror-frozen brain did not immediately place.

Reflexively, her leg stiffened and the car lurched.

Her chest ached from the increased speed of her heart, and the muscles in her neck screamed out as if they were encircled by a noose. For a second, Molly felt as if she had suddenly died and floated above herself.

“I’ve got a gun aimed at your back. Put your hand back on the wheel.”

Molly trembled as the unseen passenger roughly pushed at her hand, and she cried out in a little whimper. The door that was ajar was on the passenger side of the car, she realized in horror!

While she was out helping keep a fellow human being alive, this guy had crept into her back seat with who knew what brand of crime on his mind.

She was too afraid to look around but risked a quick check into the mirror. It told her nothing. He must be hunkered down in the corner of the seat, or on the floor. How could I not have seen him when I got in? she asked herself. Molly damned the fact that she owned a two-door car. You could never see into the back seats.

With her hands now growing sticky with sweat against the leather steering wheel, a million possible actions to take flew through her mind. She could honk, slam on the brakes, run into a car. Anything to get someone’s attention. The traffic light a few hundred yards ahead changed to red, and Molly slowed down and stopped.

“What are you doing in my car?” she demanded.

The stranger made no response, though she heard him gasp as if in pain, then swear softly under his breath. Molly caught the image of a muscular forearm, and a glint of metal around his wrist. Then she saw his gun.

“Drive.”

She jerked her eyes straight ahead. The light had turned green. “Where to?” she asked, keeping her foot on the brake.

“Drive home. That’s where you were going, wasn’t it?”

He was Australian. The Crocodile Dundee inflection was there, though all the wit and “g’day, mate” humor were ominously absent.

“I’m not taking you to my home.” Molly knew she sounded insane, but even terrified, she had no intention of driving some maniacal murderer to her front door.

For a moment, it was quiet. Another car passed on her left, the driver peering in his mirror to get another glimpse before pulling his vehicle in front of her. The light ahead changed to yellow, then red again.

Molly realized she was holding her breath. Then she heard the gun click. Suddenly the man in her back seat jerked her head back by the hair. “Drive to your house or I will. I know the address, Molly, and I know Mission Verde. You have three seconds to decide what happens next.”

Tears stung Molly’s eyes from the pain of his grip, as well as from sheer physical terror. The fact that he knew her name scared her much worse than when she thought she was a randomly chosen victim. Some bell of recognition was ringing in her brain, though through the fog of fear she couldn’t tie it to a specific piece of information.

With no other alternative, Molly eased her foot off the brake and hit the gas, sending the car rushing through the red light.

Chapter Two

A half mile from her home, Molly’s heart rate slowed down a bit, and anger joined forces with hysteria as a leveling force. Most people she knew would agree that she wasn’t a tough person, but she also did not allow anyone to push her around.

If a waitress was snooty, Molly asked to see the manager. If she paid eighty dollars for a silk blouse and the seam popped open the first time she wore it, Molly took it back. So, now that it appeared she had been kidnapped, she decided to be what her nephew, Tyler, would call a “hard case.”

Her passenger had made no further comment the past few seconds, but she could hear his breathing. She thought he must be injured and wondered if he’d been a passenger in one of the wrecked cars. Molly kept picturing the gunshot wound in the one man’s back.

Was the guy in her car the shooter?

Clenching her teeth to stay calm, she let the car coast as she rounded Isabella Avenue, weighing if she should call the guy’s bluff and go straight instead of turning on Plaza Viejo, where her town house was. She stopped at the light two blocks from her house, slanting her gaze to the mirror again.

“You can turn right on red in California, doll. I suggest you do it.”

“I need to get gas.”

“If you run out, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Someone else knew all about being a “hard case,” she decided.

One minute later, Molly turned left into the steepest driveway in town, cursing the fact that she hadn’t seen one cop or one burly trucker.

The car groaned as it usually did at the incline, and Molly shifted into low. Her home was one of sixty, ten rambling groups of blocks cut into terraces in the hilly countryside of Mission Verde, fifty-six miles south of Los Angeles. It sat at the edge of some of the last undeveloped land in the area, where skunks, raccoons and rabbits poked around on the patio where Molly sunned herself.

Killing the headlights, Molly heard the coyotes bragging out loud about their night’s catch of slow house pets, and a shiver of empathy for their furry prey ran down her back. She reached for the door at the same moment her passenger again grabbed her hair.

“Take it nice and slow, Molly girl. I wouldn’t want to wake up your neighbors.”

“Stop pulling my hair,” she replied, surprised when he let her go. Slowly she stepped out of the car. Her skirt caught on the edge of the door and she tugged at it quickly, unable to place the weight in her pocket. Then she remembered.

Holy night, Molly thought as her scalp prickled with fear. I’m armed.

She turned toward her captor and got her first look at him as he stepped out of the car. He was big. Well over six feet, he had shoulders like some lumberjack and longish blond hair. He wore jeans and cowboy boots, a red T-shirt with an Aussie flag over his heart and a tiny gold earring in his right ear.

“Oh my God,” Molly gasped. “It’s you.”

“Hello, Miss Jakes. Long time no see.” Despite the words, he didn’t smile.

Impossible as it seemed, standing in front of Molly, gun in hand, was the man she’d met briefly in the office of Inscrutable Security, the night Frederick Brooker was alleged to have shot Paul Buntz. Molly felt her stomach flip as a rushing, ringing noise rattled through her brain. My God, she thought, as her face flushed with embarrassment and anger, I fantasized about this guy! Talk about poor judgment!

She stared at the big man. He was sporting handcuffs this time. Or handcuff, if the singular is correct, Molly silently corrected. His right wrist was encased in one metal circle. The empty one hung down like a punk rocker’s bracelet.

The gun was big, too, with a long, black barrel.

She met his eyes. “Who the hell are you and what’s this all about?”

“Let’s go in. Then we’ll talk.”

“Oh, sure. I’ll make coffee,” she snapped.

The man’s deep blue eyes narrowed. “I’d rather have tea. Or don’t you Yanks ever drink the stuff?”

“I’ve got tea. I save it for invited guests.”

“Yeah, well consider me invited or we’ll finish this right here.” He moved the gun slightly, his face deadly calm.

The weight of the pistol in her skirt felt enormous, and Molly wondered if he could see the outline of it against her leg. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was close herself in her house with this maniac, but she couldn’t think clearly enough to decide what else she could pull off.

Molly nodded toward the path winding around the parking garages. “We need to go that way. Should I go first?”

The man seemed to detect something in her eyes that racheted his anxiety up a notch, because he reached out and grabbed her arm. “Who’s in there?”

She could smell the fear on his skin and began to panic. He had kidnapped her, for heaven’s sake! What was he so afraid of? “My marine husband and six Dobermans. So why don’t you take off now?”

Molly regretted her smart answer but not the look on the man’s face. He looked shocked. But the shock quickly turned to arrogance. “Nice try. Get going. I’ll take my chances.”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.” An obvious answer to her question suddenly occurred to her, and she felt weak. “Does this have anything to do with Brooker?”

His grip on her arm tightened and he waved the gun in her face. “Shh. I don’t want you waking anyone, understand?”

When he drew closer to her, Molly realized with a shock that she had memorized his features from their last meeting. Up close she saw deep fatigue lines in his face. But it was the same firm chin, the same aggressively curved nose, the same pale eyebrows, silky above eyes a clear sea blue. He had a tiny, uneven cleft in his chin, which she did not remember. He was as tanned as when she saw him months ago, as if he worked outdoors, and his teeth glimmered white in the light from the security lamp next to her front door.

“I understand. But don’t you see how ridiculous this is for me? I can’t let you in my house. I’m afraid,” she added, the very real sentiment coming out without her thinking it.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that. But I’m not standing out here in the open with you. Now get going!”

He pushed her, and she took a few steps toward her door. “Look, I live alone. But I don’t have any money in the house. Why not take my purse and the keys and my car and go. I don’t have anything else of value inside.” She heard the plea in her voice and felt tears welling. She thought the man looked regretful for a moment, but his expression changed quickly.

“Go. Now, Molly, I don’t want to shoot you.”

“How nice you remember my name,” she couldn’t help retorting.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I didn’t, but we’ve got mutual friends who reminded me.”

For the first time, Molly considered screaming, despite the folly of it amid these thick-walled, high-windowed units that were touted for their soundproof qualities. But she knew it would get her killed, as well as possibly some of her neighbors. The man released her and she walked toward the door, prompting the lizards who lived in the bushes to do their usual rustling through the ivy. The noise made the man next to her tense, but it was a comfort to Molly.

Molly’s neighbor above, Jerry, was never home during the week. She considered going up to the wrong door in the hopes of alerting someone but discarded that notion as the man’s gun pressed into her back. Though she wasn’t crazy about most of her neighbors, she didn’t dislike anyone enough to risk getting them killed.

Molly turned the key in the dead bolt, then in the lock, and suddenly she and the man were inside. He rested for a moment while his eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Neither of them made a move to turn on the light, but enough of it poured in from the twelve-foot wall of windows on the opposite side of the living room for him to see the layout.

Molly stared at her comfy chairs, the shawls to drape over legs in cool evenings, the pillows her friends had made, and felt none of the joy she usually did. Her big splurge items since she’d bought the town house were pictures. She loved art, and the walls held a few lovely paintings. The man didn’t seem too interested in any of it, though.

“So where’s the tea?”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on and what you want with me?”

“I need something to drink, that’s why,” he replied. He gestured with the gun. “Why don’t you pour?”

Molly moved to the left, and he followed through the archway into her kitchen. Large by the area’s standards, it held cupboards floor to ceiling, a center work island with a stove, and a pass-through to the dining room on the opposite side of the wall.

She was more scared than she ever imagined a person could be. She had no idea what was going to happen next, and the suspense was making her dizzy with fear.

“What kind of tea?” she whispered in a ragged voice.

“Kind?” he asked.

“I have Lipton, decaf orange spice and Earl Grey.” Her hand rested on the canister and her eyes met his. She saw then how dry his lips were; the bottom one was cracked and bleeding at the corner. He was still pointing the gun at her, but for the first time she felt her terror recede a degree.

He didn’t seem the type to shoot a woman at close range, or at any range, really. He looked exhausted, frightened and, unless Molly was completely wrong, in pain.

“Lipton will be fine, doll. Two sugars and milk.”

Molly snapped on the flame under the teakettle. “I don’t have milk.” She did have, but she didn’t feel hospitable.

Disappointment flashed across his face, and she thought how stupid this scene was. Here she was with a stranger, acting like some domestic couple, discussing what was needed at the grocer’s. Just then he groaned and rested his hands on the tiled counter of the cooking island.

Molly stood two feet away from him and for the first time noticed how badly bruised he was. He seemed to have some kind of bandages on his neck, below his collar.

She moved around the counter toward her front door but stopped when his head snapped up. The stare he gave her now was one of a man clearly in pain, and his knuckles were white around the grip of the gun. “Stand still, damn you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Carefully she put her hands into her skirt pockets, hoping the bolt of fear that rammed through her arm muscles didn’t show when her fingers made contact with the gun secreted there. “I’m not going anywhere. What’s wrong with you? Have you been shot?”

“Don’t concern yourself with me, doll. I’m fine.”

She nodded at the keys lying on the counter. “Why don’t you just take my car and go? Lock me in a closet or something.”

“I can’t go anywhere yet. I need you to help me get this thing off.” He held up his arm with the handcuffs dangling.

“That’s why you kidnapped me?”

The man’s eyes went blank and suddenly he raised the gun and pointed it directly at her throat. “No. That’s not why. I know you, from before. Why don’t you talk for a minute? Tell me how you know Fred Brooker. Did he send you to get me tonight?”

“What are you talking about?” she replied, taking a step backward. “I told you the night we met that I work for the phone company. I was in his office on business. I never even met the man. So why would he send me to get you?” Molly stopped talking and leaned against the counter. “And how would he know you were going to be in a wreck tonight?”

The man didn’t seem to be listening to her. He was gazing off over her shoulder. It gave her the creeps, and a fresh wave of anxiety that he might be on drugs crashed over her. “Look, you can’t stay here. I’ve got to go to work this morning. I’ve got a big job to supervise in San Clemente. If I don’t show up, my crew will be here looking for me. So will my boss.”

The man caressed the trigger with the pad of his thumb. “Supervise?”

“Like I just told you, I’m with the phone company. I’m a manager. We’re putting in a new system at the administrative offices of Green Grocery Stores today, and I’m in charge.” Molly blinked, trying desperately to remember if he’d locked the door behind her. She decided he hadn’t. “So have your tea and I’ll take a shot at the handcuff, but then I want you to leave.”

He flinched when she said the word “shot.” He lowered the gun a few inches.

“I know you must be scared, Molly,” he replied in what in other circumstances would be an apologetic tone. The stranger’s glance rested for a moment on Molly’s face. “I’m sorry I’m frightening you. It seems, however, that it can’t be helped.”

The teakettle began to wail.

When the man turned his eyes toward the noise, Molly pulled the gun from her pocket as if she had practiced the move for years. “Throw that gun down and move over against the wall.”

The man’s face registered no surprise, which scared Molly worse than if he’d cursed at her. “Well, now, that changes things, doesn’t it, doll?” He placed the gun on the counter, then reached both hands behind his head, grimacing slightly when his fingers touched his neck.

Molly’s hands were sweating and her arm ached from the weight of the gun, or from the tenseness of her grasp. The kettle’s screams were full volume now, and the hot steam escaping from its mouth began to fill the cool room like fog.

Her plan was to direct him to her bedroom, which could be locked from either side of the door. After she locked him in, she could call the police. Which meant she had to get him to walk about thirty feet out of the kitchen, across the foyer and down the hall. “I want you to walk out of the kitchen and turn left.”

His eyes flickered toward the dark hallway. “To your bedroom, Molly? I’d go there at your invite even without the gun.”

“Very funny. Just walk.” Her voice was too loud and she glared at the still-wailing kettle.

He made no move.

Nausea churned her stomach, and her skin began to turn clammy from all the steam. Could I just shoot him? Molly asked herself. She was too nervous to look down at the gun to see if it had anything like a safety on it. A knot of pain was throbbing in her shoulder blade.

“Start walking, you creep, or I’ll hurt you.” The insulting word zapped out of her mouth, surprising Molly and the man both. He made a noise deep in his throat, and a dangerous glint came into his eyes.

All at once he lunged, hurling the red-hot teakettle off the stove directly at Molly, a shout of pure animal anger erupting from his throat. She banged her body against the cabinet to duck the kettle, then turned and ran for the front door. He tackled her and grabbed the gun before she got three feet.

They rolled on the floor while Molly clawed and screamed, kicked and cussed at him, remembering most of her self-defense moves but executing none of them with any effectiveness.

Even injured, his six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame found no match in a woman almost a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter. They smashed into the foyer table and onto the floor, where Molly felt his body all over her. His hands were so quick she couldn’t get a blow in. She kept yelling, though, and he moved a knee over her arm and covered her mouth with his hand.

“Shut up, damn you. Shut up!”

Molly looked him right in the eye, then used every ounce of strength to bite his hand. He didn’t yell, but he did slap her head back against the floor, sending her sliding into a fuzzy pit of pain and unconsciousness.

Chapter Three

Alec Steele stood in Molly Jakes’s kitchen berating himself for allowing a bad situation to get so much further out of hand. He never should have abducted her; he should have walked off the freeway and found another car.

But seeing her had given him such a start. He couldn’t believe it was the same attractive woman he had last seen on the night he had stood on Fred Brooker’s boat and watched as the businessman shot and killed another human being.

Alec had thought of her several times in the months between that night and this, especially when he was alone on his boat, the Strewth, in the blue-green waters off Australia’s coast. He had even planned to look her up when he was in the area, having kept the business card she had snapped down so primly on Fred Brooker’s desk.

Could it be a coincidence that she was here? In a city of millions, what the hell had she been doing leaning beside the corpse of a man who had tried to kill him?

With a shiver, Alec threw down four aspirin tablets and took a long swallow of water. The single handcuff pinged against the glass and he frowned. It was time to check and make sure Molly Jakes was recovering from that bonk on the head he had given her.

As well as to find out if she was as innocent as those warm brown eyes made her seem.

* * *

MOLLY CAME TO SLOWLY, wanting to believe what she was remembering had not really happened. But, judging from the throbbing in her head, it had.

She was lying on her bed, the afghan, knitted by her best friend’s mother, tossed over her bare legs. She was still wearing her stained T-shirt and skirt, but the Aussie had washed her hands and arms.

The thought of some man washing her down while she was out cold sent a wave of anger and embarrassment spilling down her body, an emotion quickly replaced by the terror of the situation. Molly struggled to sit up, which was a bad move, for immediately her stomach contracted and her head felt as if it had been used as a strike ball in a bowling alley.

She wiggled up against the headboard, sank back onto the thick pillows and stared at the door. It was closed, and she guessed, locked, as well. She was now a victim of her own nesting instincts, which had her install old-fashioned locks with keys sporting lovely silk tassels. Trouble was, they could lock a person in as easily as out.

This imprisonment in her own home made her angry enough to attempt to sit up again. She remembered in time to avoid the pain and made herself lie quietly and smolder. Her gaze roamed the room for help or protection. The Aussie had unplugged and removed the phone. Her windows did not open, except for the louvered ones eight feet up the glass.

The town house faced a hill and was alone in the last unit save for her upstairs neighbor, who drove a long-distance rig and was never home on Thursday. Of course, today was Thursday.

Molly swore when she was really frustrated. She knew it was immature, but the vulgar phrases passing her lips relieved some of her anxiety. Only for a moment, however. Fear returned like a growling bear at the sound of the doorknob turning. The tiny hairs on her arms rose above the goose bumps, and she drew her legs up defensively.

She was scanning the room again, trying to focus on something she could use for a weapon, when in walked the person about whom all the curses had been uttered. The stranger looked as bad as Molly felt. For the first time, she noticed that his clothing was also soiled, probably from the deep scrape down the side of his right arm.

It was after six. Sunlight streamed through the white linen drapes. The intruder squinted at Molly and walked toward the bed, halting about two feet away.

She wanted to spit at him but settled for yelling, “You son of a bitch. Do all the men from down under beat women, or just scum like you?”

“Well, glad to see your sweet personality wasn’t altered by our little ruckus.” He took a step closer and Molly flinched, which stopped him in his tracks.

“Ruckus?” she sputtered. “Let’s use the right word here, mate. In the States, we call it kidnapping, assault and battery, attempted murder.”

“Now hold on. I never meant to hurt you. I was just trying to get my hand away from your damn teeth.”

He held up his hand, showing how he had bandaged himself with some adhesive tape and gauze. He’d made a real mess of it; the tape was all lumpy where it had stuck to itself before he’d got it stuck to him.

“I bit you in self-defense.”

He made a grunting sound. “I’m sorry you got hurt, Molly. I really never meant to do that.” He ventured a step closer and stared intently into her face, not to see into her thoughts, she realized, only her eyes.

“Your pupils are the same size. I’d say you don’t have a concussion.”

“Are you a doctor?” Molly demanded.

“No,” he countered. “Are you?”

“No. For the tenth or so time, I work for the phone company. Remember my boys with hard hats?”

“Hard heads, as well, if they’re having to work for you, Molly Jakes.” The intruder flushed under his tan as his voice roughened. “If you don’t mind me saying, you’re out of your mind, acting like some damn female John Wayne. Don’t you American women have any sense at all? Don’t you know enough not to attack a man twice as big as you? If I were a criminal, I could have killed you when you pulled that gunslinger stunt of yours.”

Molly glared. “Who the devil do you think you are, lecturing me like my dad used to? And what is all this John Wayne stuff? Don’t you get any current movies in Australia?”

“I think you’re being hysterical, Molly.”

“And what are you talking about, saying if you were a bad guy? If you’re not a bad guy, what do you call what you’ve done to me the past few hours? If you’re not a bad guy, call the police and get them out here, and we can all listen to your explanation together.”

He rose abruptly, walked over to the bedroom window and peered through the curtains. Molly felt her fear flare up again as she realized just how big he was. The man rubbed at his ribs, which obviously pained him, then turned as he ran his long fingers through his hair. “My name is Alec Steele. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

“Why would I know your name?”

“For the same reason I know yours. For the same reason I can’t call the police. And I can’t let you call them.”

The single handcuff still dangled from his wrist, making the incongruously comforting sound of a dog’s license clanking against a choke collar. His name seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d heard it before. “Why not?”

“Because I can’t trust the bastards, that’s why not.”

“Why not?”

Molly’s redundant question hung between them while he got a very odd look on his face. “They may be trying to kill me.”

For several seconds, Molly examined this statement, wondering if she was correct in detecting honesty in this very macho man’s voice. She was a woman who genuinely liked men but wouldn’t claim to know a whole lot about them.

One thing she did know, after working with them for twelve years, was that they didn’t like people to know they were scared. Which meant this guy must have been frightened big-time to admit such a thing to a female.

“Does this have something to do with your being at Frederick Brooker’s office the night he was supposed to have murdered someone?” Molly remembered that she’d told the police about their meeting. During her interviews with them, the cops had acted as if the man was of no interest to them at all. One of them probably mentioned his name to her, she decided.

“You’re a material witness at the trial, aren’t you?” she demanded.

“Yes.”

“What was all that stuff last night? The wreck and all. Does it have something to do with the trial?”

Alec Steele stared at her for several seconds. “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“Because I don’t understand how we both came to be at the same place at the same time when you live in Australia and I live here.”

“I don’t understand that, either, Molly. I was hoping maybe you could explain it.”

“Me?”

“What were you doing out at three a.m.?”

“My job. What were you doing?”

Alec felt confused, then angry. He had half a mind to tell her the truth. That he had been abducted. Drugged. That he had been sitting with two thugs in a car on the freeway when their car was rammed from behind and all hell broke loose.

But he couldn’t tell her any of that. If she was involved with the people who had abducted him, he could be playing into their hands. He stared hard at the fresh-faced beauty in front of him. She couldn’t be involved with the guys who had grabbed him. But she must have been targeted, or why else would she have been there?

The questions in his mind made him angry because he knew he couldn’t answer them now. Angrily he shook his finger at Molly. “Tell me what you’re going to testify about.”

Molly opened her mouth, then closed it. She had no intention of doing anything like that, she decided. While she was no longer afraid Alec Steele was going to kill her, he did have a gun in his waistband, and he seemed to have no intention of leaving. And while she thought he was gorgeous, she had no intention of spending any more time than she had to in discussing whatever it was that was bugging him.

She had to get to the authorities. She had to get help.

And to do that, she had to get rid of him. “First I need to go to the bathroom,” Molly announced as a plan began to take shape in her mind.

Alec blinked as he thought it over, then finally nodded his head in agreement. “Sure.” He walked to the door and opened it, let her walk past but followed close behind.

She stopped at the bathroom door. “Where are you going?”

“With you.”

“Thanks. I think I can manage.”

His glance swept over her bathroom and came to rest on the high windows above the sink. He looked back at her intently as if he was measuring something, then backed out of the room and closed the door with a resounding snap. Molly knew he was standing in the hallway, which really ticked her off. She turned on the water in the sink and left it running while she took care of things.

Her head didn’t hurt all that bad now that she was up, and it felt good to brush her teeth. She also went after her hair, glad for once that the thick brown mane was straight. Since she had found someone to cut it decently, it hung well, framing her round face and looking shiny and healthy, though her skin showed the results of a sleepless night of shock and fright.

She scrubbed her face and rubbed in a dollop of moisturizer, then stripped off her soiled clothes. Even without clean underwear, Molly felt human again as she wiggled into the one-piece terry jumper she wore around the house in the summer.

Just as she zipped it over her chest, Alec rapped his knuckles against the door. “You okay in there, love?”

“Love, doll, chit. Don’t you ever stop with the cutesy labels? You would never be able to hold a job with an equal opportunity employer in this country.”

“Have me working for a woman?” he challenged through the wooden door. “No thanks. Come out if you’re done. We need to get a few things settled.”

Yeah, sure, she answered silently. “I’ll be out in a minute. Why don’t you make us some tea?”

This false, friendly chattiness was a calculated gamble on her part. While the guy was obviously a danger to her, she couldn’t believe he wanted to kill her, which allowed her some options. She was eager to get to a phone, though she knew she would have no chance of that with him in the same room.

Since Alec Steele had made no protest in response to her cheeky suggestion, she reached down and flicked the lock closed. Still no reaction. That meant he’d headed for the kitchen. She turned on the shower, then scrambled up onto the counter and cranked the window completely open. It was plenty big enough, she decided quickly.

Molly had not yet installed new screens, so she didn’t have to worry about pushing them out and having them crash into the thick ivy. She hoisted herself up, wondering if the ivy was thick enough to save her own body.

The outside of her town house offered a sheer drop twelve feet to the pavement. Her neighbor Jerry’s front porch was directly above the window and Molly hoped she could sit on the window ledge and pull herself up enough to get a leg over his railing. Her nerves were buzzing when she stuck her head out the window and looked around.

None of the other neighbors was out yet. She considered screaming but decided they would have a much better chance of hearing her out in the open than from inside. Just then, the bone-jarring noise of jackhammers exploded in the late-summer air.

Great, Molly thought. Just peachy. They’re finally patching the potholes from last winter’s mud slide. With all the racket, she was definitely on her own.

Her fanny stung from the sharp lip of the window, and Jerry’s rail was farther away than she thought. She didn’t have much room to maneuver so she swung one leg over the windowsill and tried to reach sideways for the rain gutter.

Her fingers slipped just as the pounding on the door started. She couldn’t hear what Alec Steele was saying over the drone of the shower and the work crew, so she yelled back, “I’ll be out in a second. Make some eggs.”

Something about her voice must have alerted him. Maybe he could tell she was way up off the ground, she realized, because he tried the door. Molly heard him rattle it, then hit it a couple of times with his fist when he realized it was locked.

The sound of his fury made her rush. Using all her strength, Molly pulled herself completely out of the window, balancing her toes on the ledge. Because the windowpane opened in, she had nothing but the frame to hold on to as she tried to stand, though she found she could reach the railing now, with about six inches to spare.

Gritting her teeth, she forced her right hand to release the window and made a grab for the metal slat of Jerry’s rail with both hands. With much effort, she started pulling her body up the side of the building.

The stucco against her skin hurt like the dickens, pricking the soles of Molly’s feet. She was breathing through her mouth, concentrating on pulling her rear end up even with her shoulders when she slipped. Her knees skidded and banged against the rail and she slid down, though she somehow managed to hold on despite now sweating hands.

She knew she didn’t have much more time. Her shoulder blades and every muscle in her back screamed for relief, but after five or six seconds, she managed to grab the rail with her left foot and hoist herself up.

It was exhilarating, but only for a moment. The front door opened below her and she flattened her body against the wall. Alec Steele was most likely searching the ivy, figuring Molly had dropped down and been killed, considering his unspoken but guessably low opinion of women’s physical abilities.

But the man was no fool. She knew it wouldn’t be long before he checked upstairs. Molly had a feeling he wouldn’t be nearly as calm as he’d been a minute ago. She grabbed the knob on Jerry’s door and turned it, but of course the door was locked. She had a key to his place, but it was hanging downstairs on the key keeper in her kitchen. She dropped to her knees to feel under the slimy green welcome mat. Amazing how people leave their keys in such obvious places, she thought as her heart pounded faster. A yell of victory nearly escaped as her fingers found the cold piece of metal. Still on her knees, she leaned over and slipped the key in, shivering as the door creaked open to admit her into the safe haven of her neighbor’s empty home.

Molly shut the door behind her, surprised at how badly her hands were shaking. The skin on her face felt taut and unreal, and she had a funny hollow sound in her ears, like the one she got on some carnival rides. She knew enough about shock, however, to realize that it probably accounted for all these bizarre symptoms.

The dead bolt seemed nice and sturdy, and for good measure she fumbled with and finally engaged the chain. She turned and ran into the kitchen and picked up the wall phone. It seemed to take forever to punch in 9-1-1, but finally a man answered.

“I need help, please,” Molly said.

“Give me your name, phone number and location, please.”

Her tongue felt like leather. She swallowed, then ran it over her dry lips. But before she could speak, an urgent pounding began at the front door a few feet away.

“Molly! Open the door. Please, I need to tell you something about last night you need to know. Please, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Right,” she yelled in a sarcastic voice. Alec Steele’s voice was clear even through the plaster and wallboard that made up most of the residential buildings in California. He is insane, she thought. Why doesn’t he just run away?

“Miss? Are you okay, miss? Please give me your name and location,” the emergency operator’s voice insisted in her ear, but suddenly all Molly could hear was the echo of Alec’s words of a few minutes earlier, saying he couldn’t trust the police.

“Molly! Please, I don’t have much time.” Alec’s voice was louder.

Molly didn’t feel afraid, only confused somehow. He was pleading with her as if they were friends.

Which they weren’t.

The man had kidnapped her at gunpoint, for crying out loud! Still, how did they happen to be at the same place last night? Had Alec Steele planned it?

Had someone else? Fred Brooker?

None of it made sense to her. Molly’s internal argument had slowed her reflexes, but she had come to a decision.

Err on the side of the sensible, she told herself. Swallowing hard, Molly spoke into the phone more loudly than she had intended.

“My name is Molly Jakes. I live at 2001 Plaza Viejo. But I’m in the town house at 2003. Send help immediately. I think there’s a very dangerous man with a gun by the name of Alec Steele outside. He kidnapped me. Please hurry.”

Chapter Four

Thirteen minutes isn’t a long time if you’re waiting for a taxi, and it’s a short amount of time if you’re waiting for a doctor. But if you’re waiting for the cops, Molly decided, it feels like a day and a half.

Alec pleaded another minute or so while Molly stayed on the emergency line, and his voice grew a little more desperate, then trailed off. She assumed he had departed. Normally very civic-minded, she decided there was no way she was going to make an attempt to try to stop him.

As she sat with her head pressed to her knees and her back against Jerry’s front door, it passed through her mind that she should probably call all the neighbors and warn them. But she didn’t know any of their numbers and wouldn’t have known what to say in any case.

The police were efficient and polite when they showed up, two young Mission Verde cops, ringing Jerry’s door and calling out nicely, “Miss Jakes. It’s the police.”

They dutifully checked her town house, walking in and out of every room after they had thrown open her front door, but Alec Steele was nowhere in sight. The three were joined a few minutes later by two additional officers, one a woman.

Ten minutes after that, four Orange County P.D. members arrived, one of whom was the plainclothesman Molly had talked to at last night’s freeway accident scene. He obviously hadn’t had any sleep, either, and his manner had deteriorated to a point where even the excuses she made to herself on his behalf didn’t allow her to like him.

“You’re telling us you drove this guy from the accident scene out to your house?”

“He held a gun on me, Officer. And as I’ve told all eight of you, I didn’t know he was there until I was too far away from any cop to yell for help.”

At that, Lieutenant Cortez, as Molly had heard one of the others call him, turned and yelled for the rest of them to start searching the area for Alec. Molly described her car, and the female cop went to look and see if it was still in her car space. Molly didn’t see her keys anywhere but couldn’t remember what had happened to them last night, so really had no idea if Alec Steele had them or not.

Cortez and Molly stayed put, she on her pink-and-green flowered couch, he pacing in front of the fireplace. “So when did you know this Alec Steele from before?”

Cortez had called Lt. Lester DeWitt of the Summer Point precinct and run the whole story by him, and DeWitt was frantic over this new development. He had asked to speak to Molly.

She repeated her story about the night Paul Buntz was murdered.

“So how does this Alec Steele fit into the Brooker case, Lieutenant?” Molly had demanded.

The cop had given her no answers, only promised to come by with an assistant district attorney that evening to explain “what you need to know about this.”

Molly handed the phone back to Cortez. He listened for a minute, then slammed down the receiver, about as happy as Molly over the Summer Point detective’s stonewalling.

Cortez resumed his questioning. “And you didn’t see Steele get into your car?”

“No.”

“Did any of the other men involved in the accident mention his name to you?” Cortez stopped and stared at Molly, his hands on his hips. His coat jacket was pushed back, and she could see his holster.

“The only guy I worked on who was alive didn’t do anything but gag after I gave him mouth-to-mouth.” Molly folded her arms across her chest, wishing she had not been barefoot. There was something about talking to this angry cop without wearing shoes that made her feel guilty.

Cortez started pacing again. “Okay, let’s take this from the top, Miss Jakes. Tell me everything Alec Steele said to you.”

She started with Alec’s “put your hands back on the wheel” and kept talking, all the while wondering where he’d gone to. He wouldn’t get far with that handcuff hanging from his wrist, even if he did take her car. Once the police put out an alert on the plates, they would catch him.

That conclusion made her feel uneasy as she got to the part in her reconstruction where she was making tea for a man holding a gun on her. Just as she was figuring out some way to explain how she had forgotten to tell Cortez last night about the gun she had accidently carried off from the wreck, thereby having it to pull on Alec Steele, the female cop came running into the living room.

“He’s taken her car. It’s not in her carport.”

“Great. He’ll be out of the county by the time we get this on the air.” Cortez glared at Molly, then turned back to the patrolwoman. “Call the car in and put out an APB on Alec Steele. Get his description from the others.” He turned to Molly. “You did give them a description?”

“Yes.” She was anxious to ask Cortez why Alec thought the cops were out to kill him but decided to keep her questions for the district attorney this evening.

Molly listened as he gave a few more gruff orders to the other officers as they returned. “And bring Miss Jakes into the station. We’ll get her complete statement there.”

“Wait a minute. I have to go to work today.”

Cortez faced her again, his pockmarked skin oily and pale with fatigue. “We need your statement, Miss Jakes. A very dangerous individual is on the loose, and you may have important information. It’s your duty.”

“I don’t think I need or deserve a lecture on civic duty, Officer,” she replied.

He seemed to soften a bit and used a more civil tone. “This is for your own good. If he has your keys, he could get back in the house. He’s very dangerous.”

“How dangerous? What did he do?” Molly thought of the guy with the bullet in his back. A cop, maybe this one in front of her, might kill Alec if he resisted their efforts to apprehend him. “Did he shoot that man in the wreck last night?”

Cortez ignored her question and ordered the uniformed officers out on assignments, then turned and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “No one was shot last night.”

He had very dark eyes, making his pupils nearly invisible. Molly began to tremble suddenly and clenched her fists at her side. “Don’t b.s. me, Lieutenant. I saw the wound. The guy lying by the Bronco who was wearing a gun. He had a hole in his left shoulder—”

“You’re mistaken, Miss Jakes. No one was shot. But one of the men who was killed in the accident was a police officer. He was a good man. He had been out looking for Alec Steele the last time the station heard from him. He must have been bringing him in when the wreck occurred. Steele was lucky to get out alive and find your accommodating car to hide in.”

“Looking for him? Why? Has it got something to do with the Brooker case, too?”

“I can’t comment on that.”

“Can you comment on the fact that it’s too much of a coincidence that, in a county of seven million people, two witnesses in a murder trial were involved in the same fatal car wreck?”

Cortez blinked. “No, I can’t. You got any explanation for that coincidence?”

“None.”

“Then we’ll leave it there. For now.”

Molly sighed, stood and walked over to Cortez, unable to shake the feeling that the cop was lying. “I’ll come in, but it’ll have to be later this afternoon, after I check on my men.”

Quickly she explained about the crew of installers, ending by pointing to the mantel clock above the fireplace. “It’s already almost eight. I have to be there by nine, so if you’ll excuse me, I need to get dressed and call someone to come pick me up.”

Cortez took a card from his pocket and handed it to her. “That’s my address and phone number. I’ll be back in around two. Be at the precinct by then, or I’ll come and get you.”

“Don’t you ever go home?” This small attempt at a more human interaction was ignored.

“I’ll see you at two, Miss Jakes. And let me take this opportunity to advise you that if you fail to appear, I have the authority to issue a warrant for your arrest, despite your friends at the Summer Point Precinct.”

What a jerk, Molly thought. A real hardball player. “You won’t need to do that, Lieutenant. I’m willing to cooperate, even though you’re treating me like a criminal.”

For a second, Cortez’s face softened, the wrinkles in his forehead slackening into his thick head of hair. But then he turned away and headed for the door.

Molly watched as he walked away. He never turned around or said goodbye, just slammed the door shut behind him.

Molly put Cortez’s business card on the coffee table and reached for the phone. She called Rafe Amundson, her installation foreman, at the shop. He agreed to send someone out, then proceeded to give her an earful about the new female cable puller, who didn’t pull fast enough to suit Rafe.

Rafe was sixty-three, one of the last icons of the prebreakup days of Ma Bell, when “men were men and women stayed home,” as he was fond of saying.

Rafe loved stirring up trouble, especially over equal rights and E.E.O. regulations, and hearing that he was in a balky mood threatened Molly’s last remaining hold on mature behavior. He enjoyed baiting her. She decided to give him a big thrill this morning and really get into it with him.

“Tell you what, Rafe. Why don’t you come here and get me yourself? We’ll discuss Sandra Jackson’s abilities on the way out to the client’s.”

Molly hung up and headed for the shower. As she cranked the window closed, her mind replayed Cortez’s denial that anyone had been shot. Though she was no medic, she was sure of what she had seen, and the round hole in the victim’s shirt didn’t look like anything he could have picked up from being bounced out of a car.

There were so many questions.

And there was Alec Steele.

Molly shook her head hard, wishing she could shake the thought of him away. He’d terrified her. And yet compelled her. Something told her he wasn’t truly a kidnapper and killer.

But what the heck was he then? Sexy as hell, some demented part of her brain answered. Disgusted with herself, Molly soaped up and washed her hair, running the water as hot as she could stand. She cut herself twice while shaving her legs and swore loudly over her lack of concentration. Ten minutes later, she was wrapped in her baggy robe heading for the bedroom.

With any luck of the bad variety, Rafe would be here before she was ready, and he’d have “women are never ready on time” ammunition to use against her during her planned consciousness-raising session.

She threw the towel and bathrobe onto the carpet in a heap, and wiggled her damp legs into panty hose. With a snap she put on her bra, then opened the closet and stared at clothes while brushing tangles out of her hair. Business suits, silk blouses and tailored dresses filled most of the space. But this morning she wanted something different. She sorted through an assortment of “mistake” buys: tweed culotte pants that made her legs look fat, a blue angora sweater dress that shed worse than a cat, a leather miniskirt that bunched up at the waist.

Finally she grabbed a beige silk dirndl and its matching cropped jacket. With a white sleeveless blouse, the outfit enhanced her skin, moderately freckled with typical brunette undertones of peach and brown. She hung the clothes on the doorknob and dropped to her knees to hunt in the bottom of the closet for beige pumps.

The bells from the front door chimed merrily. “Damn.” Molly was beginning to suffer from the lack of sleep. She suddenly felt furious, for the mistaken call for help that had halved her sleeping time, for the gruesome accident, for the damn Aussie stranger who didn’t seem at all suited to his adopted role as a criminal.

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